Page 27 of My Wild Horse King

I laugh. “A what?”

Agent Price points.

I follow his hand to the hoofprint I already know’s there, but then I feign surprise. “Wow, that’s strange. You’re right, it does look like a hoofprint, but I have no idea how that could possibly be. You’re welcome to request footage from the lobby downstairs. There are several CCTVs there, and I’m sure you can verify that no horse has come up or down the elevator or stairwells to my room.”

“Don’t you think the more reasonable explanation for mud on the floor of a twenty-fourth floor penthouse is someone’s shoe?” Kristiana’s eyebrows are lifted. “When I was in vet school, the first thing they told us was that if we hear the sound of hoofbeats, we should assume horses, not zebras.”

“So you’re a vet?” Agent Price asks. “And what kind of animals do you treat?”

“If I say horses, are you going to arrest me for something that happened at the airport?” Kristiana looks like she’s about to burst out laughing.

Agent Price goes on like this, being baited by my Russian and Latvian guests, for a few moments before his reinforcements arrive. That’s when they cuff me and drag me downstairs, requesting the video footage, as I suggested. They take all my unwanted guests with them, to be safe, and of course, there’s no chance they’re going to release that Katerina lady. I still can’t believe that Kristiana’s husband and this girl can turn into horses.

I wouldn’t believe it, if I hadn’t seen Aleks do it with my own eyes.

Kris didn’t have time to tell me much before Agent Price arrived, other than the fact that somehow our family’s involved, and that the person who defeated Alexei Romanov in the election is a maniac, who is inexplicably interested in killing me.

All of it seems absolutely insane, but then again, the muddy hoofprint in my family room also makes no sense. But eventually, after Grandfather’s lawyers show up, after they’ve looked over the videos from my lobby, and after they’ve confirmed that Kris is, in fact, my sister, and that I really did change my name, and that this Katerina person really has no criminal record, that she really did just slip out of the detention center after realizing there was a lot of chaos, they let us go.

“They’re acting like a normal person would stick around while a horse is rampaging, loose, through a building,” Kristiana’s saying to the agent. It’s impressive, how solid she is in defending her husband’s friend. If I were her, and my husband had a hot friend who needed saving, I’m not sure I’d be leaping into the fray to do it.

Kristiana’s acting skills are much better than I expected, honestly. She knows that Katerinawasthe horse, and that her friend caused the very distraction that freed her, but Kris lies about it effortlessly. I suppose that since she’s known about the whole horse thing for a while, it’s not as strange to her.

It takes a stupidly long time, but right before two in the morning, they finally drive us in a big white van back to Manhattan and release us less than a block from my apartment, surrendering the seven of them into my unenthusiastic custody. I wish I could hustle them all over to the airport and shove them onto the first flight back to Russia. I did see one of them turn into a horse, and then when there was a knock on my door, he shifted just as easily right back into a human right down to the same clothing. There’s clearlysomethingto their bizarre story. And I do believe Kris would not be here, wrecking my life, unless she felt this was important.

But I still want to get them gone as soon as possible.

“Now that they’re releasing us, can we stay with you?” Kris asks. “It’s really the only way we can guarantee your safety.”

I don’t even answer until we’re all outside my building, breathing the brisk fall air. The idea of them protecting me is ridiculous, so I say so. “You’re the only ones who have put me in danger so far.”

“But Leonid—” Kris starts again.

“No,” I say. “Stop with the Leonid stuff. There’s no way that someone in Russia—the country’s new leader, no less—cares about me or my tiny horse-race betting company. Until you showed up, my biggest concern was whether Grandfather was happy with the way I was handling the IPO.”

My phone starts to ring, and it’s him—his ears must have been burning. I wince as I answer, walking away from them and toward my apartment building’s entrance. “Grandfather.”

He may never have been a sailor in his life, but I’m pretty sure he was trained to swear by one. When, after several minutes, he finally stops ranting, he asks, “Have you lost your mind? The SEC just approved your company for the IPO, and you bail on the meeting with Black Rock that I arranged to kick this off, and then you were photographed being cuffed and dragged down to be interrogated by the Department of Homeland Security?”

It does sound bad when he puts it that way.

“Kristiana has run into some trouble.” Maybe someone else would feel guilty about throwing his sister under the bus, but I don’t. She doesn’t even care what our grandparents think. “She showed up—unannounced—and started shouting at me in the lobby. A friend of hers followed her here but didn’t get a visa, and she needed a US Citizen to vouch for her.”

“Please tell me you didn’t agree to do that. You don’t even know this friend.”

“I certainly do not,” I say. “But I do know my sister, and vouching for her Russian husband’s old family friend was easier than making an even bigger deal out of this to the media or a government agency.”

Grandfather grunts.

“Trust me—none of this was any part of a plan I made.”

“This is the problem with all Liepas. No matter what you intend to do, your family always drags you down.”

I grit my teeth. I can’t even argue, because he’s right.

“You, Daniel, must find a way to rise above this. It’s always been your anchor—the ties you have to that place. Those people.”

The one thing that has bothered me the most over the past decade is how rude and dismissive he is about Kristiana. She stayed with my father, sure, but he’s herfather. She was born and raised in Latvia, on a farm our mother loved, in a place she chose. Grandfather could be a little more understanding of why Kristiana, his only granddaughter, might want to stay with her father in the only place she ever knew. It’s not like the sums of money he sent to help them at various times ever made any sort of dent in his personal fortune.

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